Source : the age
Irish chef Colin Fassnidge and his French counterpart Manu Feildel have made no secret of their rivalry, which, in the past, has spilled over into public spats. But after more than a decade together as judges on Seven’s enduring home cooking competition My Kitchen Rules, they are tighter than ever.
For the second year in a row, they’re also travelling the length and breadth of Aotearoa New Zealand in the retro caravan they call Betty, sourcing fresh ingredients and cooking for one another on the campfire, for their companion series Off the Grid with Colin and Manu.
“Colin and I, we had our time when we had a lot of ego, and we were those types of guys that had to be strong in the kitchen,” says Feildel. “But things have changed now, and we’ve learned … I think men worldwide are changing. I think they are a little bit more open, a little bit more sharing with the problems.
“We used to be taught to be hard and to be strong, but we’re just human beings … Colin and I had our grief in the past, but we’ve spent a lot of time together. We’ve got a lot in common. We just love being together. We love cooking and hunting.”
Fassnidge jumps in: “It’s also called getting old! We’ve got less friends, and the one we have, they’re real, strong friendships.”
In Off the Grid, the pair meet food producers and restaurateurs, eat famed pies, dive for paua (abalone), cook southern blue cod in a ship’s galley, and hunt wild boar.
“We had a bit of backlash last year when we were hunting deer,” says Fassnidge. “It’s not a sport. We hunted it for food. It’s also education. Lots of kids don’t even know where food comes from … Because we hunted a boar in this season, we were very aware that this could come back to bite us. So we made sure that the whole story was told – that these animals are pests and they have to be eradicated. And we actually cooked what we killed, so it wasn’t just done willy-nilly. It’s all done very respectfully.”
They’re about to embark on another road trip across New Zealand for season three of Off the Grid, with a fourth planned around Australia. The typically five-week shoot is a welcome change from the precision and tension of the MKR set.
This 16th season is shaping up to be as dramatic as ever, with a cast of familiar tropes set to battle it out in each other’s dining rooms. Feildel hints of “shocks and bombshells” and is excited about the inclusion of Filipino cuisine, for the first time.
“We have had Malaysian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Chinese, and a lot in between, but we’ve never had Filipino cuisine,” says Feildel. “Australia’s discovering something new again. It’s brilliant.”
In another first, there is one contestant who is already known to Fassnidge.
“I wasn’t too enthused about that,” Fassnidge says. “Because it can be misconstrued that you might go easier on them. I think they pretty much learned that I wouldn’t, and they got the same as everybody else.”
This season marks a noticeable return to simpler styles of cooking.
“It’s come back to being more basic,” says Feildel. “We’ve had a surge of people trying to do fine dining for a while, and fine dining works when it works, but when it doesn’t, it’s terrible. When you go classic and simple, food is nicer to eat, because there are less mistakes that you can make. And if you do it well, it’s delicious.”
Real-world dinner parties, says Fassnidge, shouldn’t be a pressure test. “It’s called socialising. It’s just eating around the table with friends, or having a barbecue. It should be a weekly thing. That’s the way you show your friends that you like them, by cooking for them. And don’t make it a chore. Get your mates to come and help and peel the beans. Just all get together and cook together.”
MKR and Off The Grid With Colin And Manu, double series return, 7.30pm on Monday, September 28; and 9pm, Tuesday, September 29, on Seven.
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Bridget McManus is a television writer and critic for Green Guide. She was deputy editor of Green Guide from 2006 to 2010 and now also writes features and interviews for Life & Style in The Saturday Age and M magazine in The Sunday Age.
